THE ODD ANGLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 217, 13 September 1944, Page 4

THE ODD ANGLE

By MacCLURE ® YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED Monday's cabled item re the slaying of every Mayor the little Mexican town of Resurrection has had in the past quarter-century should reveal to our local Mayors how lucky they are to be the servants of such a tolerant people as ourselves. To "go gunning for the Mayor" and notch your gun for every one you pot may be great sport for the "happy-go-lucky folks of Resurrection, but it is only natural that (as the cable so naively puts it) "there is no great scramble for municipal honours" in them there parts. True enough, our own elections have witnessed many "roughhouse" incidents, but then ours is a truly democratic country and any man is allowed to express himself in public without fear of—well, a sudden death, anyway. Take the other night, for instance, when I attended that meeting at which I was invited to hear myself talk. Although there would undoubtedly be folks there who could not be expected to see eye to ,eye with me, I went unarmed. Once before, on the occasion of an election address in the Coronation Hall, Milton. the Scotchbyterian audience of that far-distant day took umbrage at "my scandalous remarks" and, unseen by me, the chairman vacated the chair, elbowed out of the way by a sturdy band of Calvinistic brethren who, with fire hose, promptly washed the remains of Mr. MacClure from that stage. It must have been something they ate on that occasion, for the most prominent of these militant churchmen later assured me "they had nae har-r-rd feelings, ye ken, Mister MacClure." And this in a town where my own pioneer father had, in the Gabriel Gully days, been a most respected citizen! But, luckily, there was no "gunplay." Q DUNEDIN'S WRATH I must have been ratner outspoken in those early days, though, for some months earlier, while seeking to address a Sunday night crowd in the Octagon, in Dunedin, in company with Steve Boreham and Jack MacManus, I had incurred their wrath, for Dunedin, although the city of my birth, knew me not and wanted to hear me still less. In vain I had assured them they "had nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to win"; in vain I warned them •of the evil machinations of the then Government (Joey Ward's) and explained to them they were slaves to the vicious capitalistic system which was draining the life's blood out of them. "They couldn't get much blood out of a Stone," somebody interrupted, indicating our chairman, whereupon Bill Stone, albeit that he was rather an anaemic-looking laddie, got his blood up, and, amid a regular Donnybrook, the "enthusiastic meeting" (a la our later report) broke up. Dunedin, in those days, was scarcely what you would call "a Labour stronghold." But, incidentally, there was no "gun-play" there, either. 0 THE COMMON MEN OP THE TRIBE This meeting of the Vital and Home Guardsman, though—there was nothing "hostile" about it. Picture a hall full of earnest men, mostly ex-Diggers, and mostly middle-aged, a cross-section of our city's manhood. Here, I decided, as 1 surveyed them, were men who j wouldn't thank you for any tricks of oratory, men to whom the hooey and dope of the average politician would fall as flat as a pancake. Any Churchillian phrase I had- stored up remained in storage, my quotations remained unquoted. These men, I remembered, had lived where I had, had seen what I had, knew what I did. And they spoke the same language, using neither Latin phrase nor the cliches of our statesmen. The Great War had found many of them ready to take their part without moan or whine and, that over, they had watched this present struggle, some as fathers, all as interested observers, realising both their own responsibilities and that of New Zealand's. They had seen life, they had known death, shared defeat as well as victory. & GREAT NAMES ARE MENTIONED And if realising all this, I dispensed with notes and occupied twice the time I was supposed to, the blame was theirs, for as, the clock forgotten, I spoke on and on of that which they had known, took them back over much-travelled paths, pausing here and there with them to drink again in the beauty of half-forgotten places or speak with some of those who have passed on, to view this and that from the angle' of middle-age, speaking my language they followed me—in many cases were ahead of me. And if great names were mentioned irreverently it was, doubtless, because we were dealing with a time when those names were not reckoned so great among men, of a time when the dizziness of high office had not so affected these great ones that one would notice it, not, at any rate, in any too-complimentary a sense. What I said, however, was not for publication, nor were the kindlyexpressed phrases of the Digger who thanked me. That over, the hearty handshakes that followed were full payment for much more than the poor little speech I gave them. And, by the postman to-day, came as nicely a worded note "on behalf of the association" as any really great orator could have wished for. And the vainest, at that.